Lunar Obverse

I should shop at Trader Joe's

2009-11-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

While I sit around and not work on my NaNo project and not blog, I'll still think of my readers and share this not-an-actual-commercial for Trader Joe's, a place I never shop at but which seems like a place I should.

(I'm talking about the hot moms in their yoga clothes. Oh, and all the delicious food.)

I stole the video from my my awesome totally personal and bestest friend ever and he totally knows me and didn't just pose for a picture with me when he was in town, Wil Wheaton and his blog post about W00tstock.

OK, back to not writing. Ciao, bellas!

NaNoWriMo began today

2009-11-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

I may be blogging even less than usual here; National Novel Writing Month began at midnight last night, and I am doing it this year.

I'm not just participating; I am going to do it - I'm going to write 50,000 words. It may not be a novel, but I'm sure a story will emerge from my frantic writing.

Tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of the first post I ever wrote on this blog. 2,223 posts (not counting 54 draft posts that have yet to, and may never, be published) and who knows how many words?

Do all my posts here tell a story? Sure, I suppose. Someday I may try to make one of them.

But for this month, I am going to create something entirely new, from nothing but my brain and experiences and creativity.

Thanks to everyone still reading. I'll check in from time to time, and after this month is over, I will be launching a more focused blog.

Choosing the past or future: The latest episode of Mad Men

2009-10-28T07:28:00.001-07:00

There will be spoilers for the most recent episode of Mad Men below.

Here, I'll give you some space to scroll past.

That should be enough. Someday I'll figure out how to include a "cut" in Blogger.

Am I just getting wiser to the writers' thematic tricks, or was it all a bit obvious this week? The episode was called "The Hobo and The Gypsy", and the first connection I made, of course, was to little Dickie Whitman's encounter with a hobo waaaaay back in the day. I believe that was in Season One. But the Gypsy?

I've learned to watch the show by asking myself, "What is the theme of this scene? What are they trying to say?" and in every scene in this episode, the characters were being asked to make a choice between either their past, or their future. Annabelle, the rich horse-farm client (and past lover of Roger Sterling) was trying to salvage the past reputation of her daddy's business. And she was trying to reclaim her past fond memories of Roger in pre-war Paris. For the first, Don tried, oh, how he tried, to sell her on the idea of abandoning the past by changing the name of the dog food that her beautiful horses became. Let go of the past and create a new future - it's obvious to us why Donald Fucking Draper would see that as the ultimate solution, right?

And Roger's choice, too, was for the future - his beautiful young bride, Jane, instead of his beautiful old lover, Annabelle. Or so we were led to think; never once did Roger mention his wife by name when turning down Annabelle. "You're not [the one]", he said, implying or allowing Annabelle to infer that the one was, in fact, Jane. But then what are we to make of Roger taking the phone call from poor Joanie, asking a favor? "You want to be on some people's minds," he said, "Some people, you don't." He liked the idea of being on Joan's mind, didn't he?

Dr. Greg, Joan's husband, was also clinging to the past - he wanted to be a surgeon, but didn't make the cut. Apparently being a psychiatrist isn't good enough for him, in spite of all Joan's coaching and prep work on his behalf, so he blows the interview. So intensely is he hanging on to the past that he signs up for the Army, his one chance to still be a surgeon... and blinds himself to the future escalation of war in Vietnam. He thinks his Army pay and rank of Captain will be enough to protect him.

Joan, who is fighting for the future she always imagined (a capable and upwardly-mobile doctor husband to care for her needs), has her past dreams rubbed in her face when Dr. Greg whines "You don’t know what it’s like to want something your whole life and count on it and not get it, OK?" Oh, my, yes, she does, and right now that thing she's wanted her whole life is crying like a spoiled kid on her couch. And she promptly smacks that thing she's wanted her whole life over the head with a vase. She realizes her past still has some influence, in the form of Roger, so she makes a call for help, since Dr. Greg isn't getting it done.

Who am I leaving out? Oh, right, the big showdown between Betty and Don. This part of the story was many-layered; Donald Fucking Draper represents the future, an identity created out of whole cloth, a poised, confident, take-charge guy, versus Dick Whitman, a scared, poor, self-loathing man trying to escape his roots. Donald F. Draper works in shiny, new, Manhattan, in a tall skyscraper, with the rich and powerful kings of corporations; Dickie Whitman worked on a farm, and then dug ditches in foreign lands as a lowly foot soldier.

Betty, his wife, and their three kids and giant house in upstate New York are Donald Fucking Draper's past; Suzanne, the schoolteacher, Donald Fucking Draper's newest, and closest-to-home, fling, with whom he's ready to run off with, is his future.

Donald Fucking Draper's Cadillac is his future; the photos and documents he keeps in a box in his desk, that Betty finds, is his past.

But when Betty confronts him with the evidence of his past, instead of choosing one or the other, he finally chooses both, and confesses (mostly) to Betty what he's been hiding from her since before he met her. He didn't tell the whole truth - it wasn't the Army's mistake that gave him the name of Donald Fucking Draper, it was his own act - but he told enough, and it was clear that he was ashamed and afraid of what it all meant.

So when Bobby Draper went from choosing the astronaut for Hallowe'en (the future) but ended up being the hobo (the past), he was mirroring his father's choice. And the two oldest Draper kids were the hobo and the gypsy at the end of the episode, with their father standing, nonplussed, behind them, again, the symbolism to me was of the past (hobo) and the future (gypsy, complete with crystal ball). The look of satisfaction on Donald Fucking Draper's face when their neighbor asked him, playfully, "And who are you supposed to be?" tells me that the choice has been made.

What an amazing episode of a masterfully-written show. I particularly liked Amanda Marcotte's analysis, as well as Silkstone's recap over at Open Salon, if you want to read more in-depth on the many levels of metaphor and details that go into this show.

The public wants options

2009-10-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

Apparently the Billionaires for Wealthcare snuck into the annual AHIP meeting:

The Billionaires for Wealthcare also had a demonstration in Portland this week. I guess when you're filthy rich, you can really get around.

"Where The Wild Things Are" (2009)

2009-10-16T22:04:00.001-07:00

Carol, the angry almost-leader of the Wild Things, has taken his King, Max, on a tour of all the things Max is King. Carol has shown Max the forests, the deserts, the beaches, and up into the mountains.

Hidden up in the mountains, in a cave, is a miniature mountain range; each mountain a tall, pointy, white-capped sculpture of twigs. Hidden in the twig-mountains are small clay replicas of the Wild Things.

The dream logic is impeccable - of course there are tiny mountains hidden in the larger mountains. Carol is a Wild Thing, a monster, anarchic, free in a terrifying sense. But of course he has spent some of his creative energy to craft and control a tiny world that's a lot like the larger one he can't control.

And in a moment of vulnerability, he has taken his King to see his handiwork.

Max, of course, is a human boy, who has donned his wolf suit and run away from home. Max's mom is overwhelmed with work that she has to bring home, and is now dating a "friend" since Max's dad is absent. Max loves his mom and needs her attention more than ever, but he doesn't have the experience or language to know why, exactly.

So Max ran away, and sailed the wide ocean, and found where the Wild Things are.

The Wild Things are pure id - raw need, and rage when their needs are denied. And Carol is the second-most dangerous one of them all (the first being the bull-like Wild Thing who almost never speaks, just groans and chuffles and looms). But showing off his twig-mountain sculpture to Max, he bares a sensitive soul.

"Do you know that feeling," Carol says, "where your teeth are all falling out? And they start to fall out faster and faster?"

Aha, I thought, hearing that. It's explicitly a dream. Almost too explicit. But the pull of the images on screen, and the connections I made to the feelings invoked by the Wild Things' monstrous visages, and surreal dialogue and their dysfunctional, wounded, bipolar interactions, entranced me.

I'm more prone to dreaming that my teeth are rubber and I'm unable to chew. Or that I have wads and wads of chewing gum that is stuck to my teeth, and I pull and pull but there's more and more, filling up my mouth and threatening my ability to breath. But I've had the tooth-falling-out dream, too.

And I have the strong feeling that tonight, again, I am going to visit the same place that Spike Jonze, Dave Eggers, and Maurice Sendak have pulled their words and images from.

Maybe I'll learn something tonight, like it appears Max did.

Traditionally funny

2009-10-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

I remember my dad taking young me to the Memorial Coliseum to hear the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself, Gene Roddenberry, talk about Star Trek, which was, at the time, one of my passions. I don't remember much about what Roddenberry said - hey, it was many years ago: 30? More? - but I do remember the Star Trek Gag Reel.

The Gag Reel was a film they showed at the end of Roddenberry's talk, and it was made up of bloopers and funny bits from the classic Star Trek show, the original run. This was before any of the movies had been made, so classic Star Trek was the only Star Trek.

In the gag reel, I saw Scotty shoveling stuff into the warp engines (he was going pretty fast; must have been at least Warp 5); I saw McCoy and Nurse Chapel shaken around, causing the good doctor to grab Nurse Chapel's, um, nacelles; I saw Spock break up and laugh again and again. And more. It was delightful, and a wonderful memory for this old nerd.

Kids these days don't have to traipse off to some distant sports arena to view such things, though. They have the internet bring the gag reels and the talks straight to their iPhones and X-Boxen.

Like this one, for the recent Star Trek reboot:

It's a tradition that goes back decades. Enjoy.

Brilliant idea

2009-10-11T22:07:00.000-07:00

Of course, my friend Ken saw Michael Moore's movie with me, and apparently he's been thinking about the movie, too, because no sooner had I hit publish on my previous post than did this video show up in an email from Ken.

And it's on topic with at least one of the at least two things I took from Moore's documentary, which is, "Just how fuckin' rich is the Catholic Church?"

Not to mention all the non-catholic churches, your Southern Baptists and your Anglican and your Greek Orthodox and your Episcopalian and your Mormons, and even the non-Christian ones like your Muslims and your Buddhists and your Vikings and so on, and so on, and so on. Though I don't know for sure if the non-Christian ones had their founders specifically telling their followers to give all their money to the poor. But I'm far too lazy a blogger to go look that up right now.

"Capitalism: A Love Story" (2009)

2009-10-11T21:56:00.000-07:00

Watching Michael Moore's latest effort, Capitalism: A Love Story, at least two things occurred to me, at two different points in the narrative.

First, while watching Moore ask the question, "Is capitalism evil?" of successively higher officials in the Catholic Church gave me a strong sense of disorientation. Really, Michael? You're basing part of your argument against the excesses of capitalism on the opinion of one of the most staggeringly wealthy institutions on the planet?

The Age of Enlightenment caused a shift in power and money from the church, particularly the church allied with government in the form of inherited rule. Capitalism was one of the economic ideas that grew out of the elevation of reason and intellect that was the Enlightenment, so it could be argued that capitalism reduced the Catholic Church's power and shifted it to business and government.

And yet the Catholic Church is still vastly wealthy; after several Google searches I can't find a decent estimate of the total wealth hoarded by the Pope and all his minions across the globe. Surely the many fabulous palaces and works of art in Vatican City alone are priceless heirlooms of human history. Would members of such a institution, which has stockpiled uncounted riches for century upon century in spite of its founders' admonishments to give away all wealth, view capitalism and its ideal of hard work making one wealthy, as evil? Probably so. No shit, Sherlock, as they say.

And for Mr. Moore to use Catholic priests as mouthpieces for his movie to label as evil the economic system that dethroned the Church just invites consideration of what, exactly, on a moral scale, the Church would be. The Church uses its vast wealth to protect it's clergy from taxes as well as from legal justice (which is the least satisfying form of justice) against accusations of pedophilia and abuse of authority. Oh, and sure, to a degree, the Church does some good work, too, though I'm far too lazy a blogger to go looking for examples. I think the millennia of greed, warfare and injustice would wipe out any good works they may have done.

My laughter at the parade of clergy on the screen was surely not what Mr. Moore intended. To be fair, I was already in agreement with the filmmaker on the morality of capitalism as it has been practiced for the last 100 years or so; I just thought his method of arguing the point was tone-deaf.

Speaking of justice brings me to my second point, where social justice - which is the best kind of justice - makes its appearance in the movie. Moore mentions that our country's Constitution does not specify capitalism as an economic system, and that leads him to an observation that I have found to be true: for all the love of democracy we have in this country, there is damned little democracy in our workplaces. The standard business is run as a dictatorship. Where workers and employees have any power at all, they have it amongst themselves in the form of electing representatives to negotiate with the exalted rulers known as Management.

But Moore goes one step further, and shows examples of businesses in America that are run democratically: co-ops. He shows a bakery in California whose name I am far too lazy to search for that is set up where every employee is a part owner, and everyone, from the CEO on down, has one full vote in the operation of the business. And Moore claims that this bakery makes money, and lots of it, to stark contrast with titans of industry like Enron, Worldcomm, General Motors, Lehman Brothers, the list goes on and on.

The employees at this business can vote out the management if they wish. In a flash, as soon as they'd mentioned that, I realized just how differently a business would be run if management had to submit to a vote of their subordinates.

And in a second flash, I knew what was wrong with government.

What reason can anyone give for not running government agencies and bureaus like a democracy? If Democracy is held to such a high ideal in our country, and the topic of many many beautiful speeches by impassioned elected officials and unelected business tycoons alike, then why are we not running our government agencies like a freakin' democracy?

Businesses can be run any way the owners want, so I'll leave them out of the question for now. There are still folk who would prefer to just follow a king and not have any personal responsibility or power. But government? Why isn't the City of Portland, or Multnomah County, or the State of Oregon, or even the Federal Government itself, staffed and organized on the principle of "One person, one vote"?

If it's good enough for the country as a whole, why isn't it good enough for everything?

I'd really like to know. And now, finally, I have a life goal to work towards.

Eight years

2009-10-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

It has been more than eight years since my mothers' death.

Today, for the first time, I wrote down how I felt about it. Or more specifically, how I feel about the reactions of my own family and why that makes me angry.

The thought has been lurking inside my head for all this time, but even I am amazed at how long it has taken me to formalize it.

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Science Friday - BOMB THE MOON

2009-10-09T09:56:00.001-07:00

How could I have the last name of "Moon" and blog at Lunar Obverse and let the NASA LCROSS mission pass without comment? I would not be much of a blogger at all. Perhaps even less of a blogger than I am now.

We threw a bomb at the moon! There's science behind it, I know, but I secretly suspect we did it just because we could. Does no one else think that the Mythbusters weren't behind this, even maybe a little bit?

Here's the video:

To all the nay-sayers who said "nay" and worried about shards of molten moon material raining down on us like cold death: you are woefully uninformed and I will find it very difficult not assuming you have difficulty with simple math and finding your ass with both hands.

Yes, I am smug. For a reason. The mass of the Moon is 7.36 x 10¹⁶ kilotons. The bomb was 1.4 kilotons. It's not going to make that much of a difference. Things the size of the bomb we used impact the Moon all the freakin' time. See those craters? That's why they're there, people.

Anyway, yay, science!

Whip It

2009-10-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

Aw, crab, another movie seen and no review has been written.

I caught a 4:40 PM showing of Whip It yesterday after work. It's Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, and she has a small role in it as a crazy roller derby chick. There's a lot of crazy roller derby chicks in it, since the movie is about roller derby and finding a family and doing your own thing and the beauty myth.

It's a great movie and I loved to see the empowerment message aimed at the female segment of our population, in the form of Ellen Page sneaking off to join a crazy roller derby team and abandoning her best friend to get busted for underage drinking, because, hey why not?

But the most surprising part of the movie for me was discovering that Kristen Wiig, who is known for her one-note deadpan passive-aggressive bit parts, is actually pretty hot when she smiles. Also, she very much reminds me of my favorite stripper, Sharai, especially in the scene where Maggie Mayhem (Wiig's character in the movie) shows up to practice wearing a long muu-muu; I've seen Sharai show up to work wearing something very similar, before she goes up the stairs to Dancer Heaven and comes back all stripperfied.

Weekend

2009-10-05T06:39:00.000-07:00

I saw Zombieland over the weekend; I owe myself and y'all a review, since I promised myself I would make a note of every movie I see in a theater. It's one of my major topics.

But since I haven't yet completed a review of The Informant!, which I saw earlier in the week, I'm a bit behind.

So I'll make a note of them, and move on.

I also took a train up to Seattle to catch the very last Mariners game of the season. The tickets were Kevin's, and our seats were in section 194, high above center field. I took many pictures and a few videos, and will post them when I get a chance to see if there's anything in there anyone other than Kevin or I would want to see.

Oh, and the Mariners won, 4-3, against the Texas Rangers. Turned out to be a beautiful day for a ballgame!

Oh, and don't google shiskaberries unless you're ready for the horrible truth to be revealed to you.

Science Friday

2009-10-02T07:25:00.000-07:00

A little science for you: Astronaut David Scott drops a feather, and a hammer, on the Moon, to verify Galileo's theory that, in the absence of atmospheric friction, objects of varying weight or mass will fall at the same rate as each other.

Here's hoping the weekend falls more like a feather for you, than a hammer.*

* I don't even know what that means.

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This trailer makes me feel like I'm 7 years old

2009-10-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else have the same reaction? Or am I letting my inner idealist run away with me?

Beautifully strange

2009-09-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

Sagan and Hawking sing a duet to the Cosmos.

Or, rather, are made to sing a duet, mixed and re-mixed by melodysheep.

Beautifully strange, just like the universe itself.

(hat tip to Dale at Faith in Honest Doubt)

Give it away

2009-09-25T18:05:00.000-07:00

From today's "Since You Asked" letter, by Cary mother-fuckin' Tennis, he writes to a girl who is tired of dating and ready for something more long-term:

Give away what you have been withholding and withhold what you've been giving away. That doesn't mean follow "The Rules." It means get real. Tell him you want a man to fall in love with and stay with, and if that's a problem for him then OK there are plenty of chicks. Plenty. Next. Not to be crass. But you have to come from a place of complete honesty and vulnerability and pain. Because if you want a lifetime relationship that is what it will be full of: honesty and vulnerability and pain.

Man, I am so ready. He may be writing for a woman, but the general advice still holds true.

I want to figure out what I'm holding back, and what I'm giving away, and reverse it. I'm ready to be honest and vulnerable and hurt and yet still with someone I love.

Bring it, world.

The New Fall Season

2009-09-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

Even though I've gotten rid of my cable TV, and even though I don't have a digital converter box for other-the-air broadcast TV, I'm still watching quite a bit of television. I just watch downloaded and streaming television on my 'net connection.

Between Hulu, which handles ABC, NBC, Fox and their associated lesser channels, and TV.com which as near as I can tell pretty much just handles CBS, I've got most of what I need. The rest I can get by having "friends" (on the internet) record them and convert them to a downloadable form for me.

Here's what I've got in my queue right now:

Fringe - Walter Bishop, the drug-taking, clinically insane, sweet old scientist, is as amusing as ever. Olivia Dunn, with her strangely-swallowed deep voice and hunched shoulders, is attractive enough but kinda boring, even as a paranormally-powered super agent. Still, this show is goopy fun.

Mad Men - I'm caught up and now watching Season 3. Damn, but that bastard Don Draper is one fascinating motherfucker. After the Drapers marriage troubles of last season, I'm looking forward to seeing how the merger of Sterling Cooper and PP&L causes friction.

The Office - Pam and Jim are expecting! I hope that now that they're together, the tension doesn't drain out of the show. But the writers and ensemble cast have kept things going for the last 5 seasons. I trust that Michael Scott and the rest will continue making me cringe and laugh (often at the same time).

Dollhouse - Rather than funny/scary like Buffy, or funny/action like Firefly (*sob* - I so miss that show), Dollhouse is funny/creepy. The programmable humans are blatant social commentary, wrapped up in a action-adventure format. Who among us isn't just as programmed as the Dolls? Who's really in charge?

Community - I watched the pilot of this, and I laughed a couple of times. Not sure how it will work over the course of a season, though - the premise seems thin. An ethically-challenged lawyer has to go back to get an actual law degree, and chooses a community college. He recruits a Spanish "study group" in order to sleep with a cute blonde girl and by the end of the pilot, everyone is being all warm and fuzzy in spite of having been used to get a date? I'll queue this up if I've got nothing else to watch; maybe it'll grow on me.

I'm also looking forward to the return of Better Off Ted, LOST Season 6 (the final one), How I Met Your Mother, and The Simpsons.

Did I leave anything out?

Just typing that out, I'm struck by how many of these shows (by which I mean all but Dollhouse) are essentially about a strong, ethically- or socially-challenged male character. That's not to say that progressive feminist values aren't apparent in at least some of them. For example, for all of the blatant sexism, racism and homophobia of the 1960s in Mad Men, check out Amanda Marcotte's review of Mad Men Season 2 (needless to say, spoilers abound), told from a feminist perspective. The women on the show may be dismissed and treated by the male characters as less than human, but the ladies also exert a fair amount of social power in their own way. And watching the show made me realize just how little has changed in 40+ years; many of the same attitudes are on display, even in progressive Portland, OR. It's made me much more aware of how I think and what I do and say to others.

And, of course, Dollhouse rests on the twin pillars of the acting talents and star power of Eliza Dushku and the writing and vision of Joss Whedon. Whedon comes by his feminist credentials honestly, having explored female empowerment in the context of a typically male-dominated genre (action-adventure and sci-fi) for his entire career.

Can you tell I like social commentary? So what am I missing out there? What recommendations for new shows do y'all have?

Caturday

2009-09-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging much lately.

Sorry.

Here's a cat with what appears to be a hangover.

At least that's what I do when I'm hungover.

Enjoy your weekend. I probably will, too!

Food stuffs

2009-09-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

I really wish that there was some kind of nutritional food bar or packet that I could eat in one serving, such that three of these packets a day would provide me with all the calories, carbs, protein, fat and miscellaneous nutritional value that I needed for that day.

What would happen if, for example, I ate nothing but green salads and Cliff Bars for every meal? Would I be denying myself some important anti-oxidant or enzyme or amino acid that, over time, would cause me to become ill, weak or stupid?

I'm kinda fed up with my having to select and prepare (or just select and pay for, if I eat out) something from my surroundings each and every day. There are too many choices, and, if left to my own devices, I select for deliciousness and (I'll admit it) sweetness, and not for the overall balanced calories and nutrition that my body and brain need.

If I could just go to the store and select a box of 21 "food bars" for a week, maybe supplement it with a vitamin and some occasional green veggies and water, that would be so easy. I could just add up the numbers on the bars and see exactly how much I'm taking in of the essential minerals and vitamins and carbo-do-hickeys.

Yeah. That'd be great.

"Inglourious Basterds" (2009)

2009-09-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

After seeing the first trailer for Inglourious Basterds, and learning that Quentin Tarantino's next flick would be a World War II movie, I could not wait to see it.

I'll admit it up front; I'm a huge fan of Tarantino's work. The more seemingly-pointless dialogue, the more senseless bloody violence, the more homage and in-jokes, the better.

But here and there, little hints seeped in. I saw the headline of IO9's review, but did not read the body, and saw the phrase "alternate history", for example. Well, sure. That makes sense. Any movie is going to be fictionalized. So I had some hint that maybe things wouldn't turn out the way they did in our timeline.

And the satirical article in The Onion, headlined "Next Tarantino Movie An Homage To Beloved Tarantino Movies Of Director's Youth", followed by a rant from a co-worker who had seen the movie about how every Tarantino pastiche was on display in Inglourious Basterds, gave me another hint. "48 minutes of two people talking while sitting at a table!" he said. "They don't leave!"

That was all I knew. Oh, wait, one more thing; several folk on Twitter told me to go see this movie.

Saturday I finally did. The short version is, I enjoyed it very much. The long version, mild spoilers included, begins now.

And it was, indeed, a Tarantino movie. There wasn't one single 48 minute long scene of people sitting at a table, however. There were, by my hazy memory, 5 or 6 scenes that were people sitting around a table and talking about something other than the obvious topic. And in each of those scenes, the tension is incredible, because the audience knows something that not everyone at the table knows. The cumulative effect of scene after scene after scene of this, though, is a ridiculous (but enjoyable, to me) self-awareness that this is, in fact, a Quentin Tarantino movie.

The action, when it comes, is heightened by all the tension created through dialogue, and all the more so because it's often so matter-of-fact to the characters - casually cutting scalps from Nazi soldiers' heads while discussing something else entirely, for example.

And even though Brad Pitt is shown, prominently, in the trailer, hamming it up with his chaw-filled mouth and his goofy Tennessee accent, this movie is not about Lt. Aldo Raines at all. It's about Shoshanna Dreyfus, a Jewish girl who tries to hide from the Nazis in occupied France and operates a movie theater. Yeah, Quentin loves old movie theaters, so how perfect is it that so much of the film is set in one?

Except for a few background-fillling-in flashbacks, though, the story is told in a straight linear fashion, which is not a Tarantino cliché at all. Instead of jumping around, as he's done in so many other movies, this one is a direct line from past to present. Perhaps he focused on the "table dialogue" so much to counter the fact of such a simple story?

Who knows?

I loved it. Not as much as Kill Bill: Vol 1 and Kill Bill: Vol 1, mind you, and not as much as Pulp Fiction... but still, I loved it.

Letters to President Obama

2009-09-11T22:28:00.000-07:00

It's nice to know that I'm not the only one sending letters to President Obama.

And it's nice to know that he reads some of them.

And it's nice to know that he responds to some of them.

I wonder if the detainees in Gitmo and Bagram write him letters?

Or the insurance industry executives;do they have to write him letters? Do they send checks? Or can they just visit him in the White House?

...sorry, is that overly cynical of me? I voted for him, I supported him with energy and money during the campaign and in the early days of his presidency, and I still believe that in some ways he's far superior to #43, and represents some of my concerns far better than Sen. McCain would have (not that either of those is a very high bar to surpass, mind you)...

...but there are still some serious concerns that President Obama has utterly failed at in defending the country and the Constitution; particularly in his approach to our two wars, our continued detention of prisoners captured in the "War on Terror", the investigation of the obvious crimes of the previous administration, and the illegal gathering of surveillance of Americans, to name just a few. I've documented my concerns to the best of my meager ability. I just wonder if President Obama has read my letters/emails, or others like them. What would he say?

Maybe I'll find out some day.

Gene Wilder responds to President Obama's critics on health care reform

2009-09-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

(And sums up my opinion of said critics, as well. Who the hell doesn't want people to have health care?)

Fish and cranberries

2009-09-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

A quick recap of the D&D game from the other night, a first draft of an ongoing, improvised story...

Player Characters:

William "Willie" Brewer, human priest of Rhoban, and brewer
Maira, half-elven wizard (with Fith, her viper familiar)
Matla, barbarian of the north
Xanril, human rogue (and architect/engineer)

In the town of Warjos Dos, in late fall, on the farthest edge of the Old Empire, a group was formed in the weeks just prior to the festival of Redtoberfest...

It all started, as it often does, in the tavern down by the docks. Over beers and dinner (fish and cranberries), Willie and Xanril reminisced and Maira and Matla were looking for work.

Ilbhaan the Dark, keeper of the lighthouse, did not show up for his normal afternoon round of drinks. Some sailors, three men, remarked that they might not get their shipment. Maira questioned the sailors and they were cagey and did not want to answer any questions, and immediately beat a hasty retreat. The bartender asked Willie if he could check on Ilbhaan since it was so out of the ordinary

Xanril followed them to the docks, and was able to overhear a conversation between the captain of the ship and the leader of the gang about their shipment, which apparently is "building supplies". The captain said to keep an eye out for the half-elf girl, but that she was of no concern. He ordered them to go find the dwarf. The sailors did not want to go back to the tavern, where they thought the half-elf girl was, so instead they began searching in the marketplace.

Xanril caught up with the rest of the group and filled them in. Willie and Xanril knew of several dwarves in town, but couldn't think of which one the sailors could be looking for. Matla decided to go check out the lighthouse.

At the lighthouse, they found the dead bodies of Ilbhaan's wife and 12 year old son, murdered in their beds, with slashing weapons.

While the others debated what to do, Matla decided to search the lighthouse. On the first floor, they found a library - and Maira immediately went looking for spellbooks. To Willie and Xanril's surprise (because they never knew Ilbhaan was a wizard back in the day), there were not just one or two, but eight full spellbooks.

They search the rest of the lighthouse, but find nothing: no other clues, no other people... or creatures. They light the fire at the top of the tower, and prepare to guard the bodies until they can take them back to the cathedral in the morning.

Shortly after nightfall, as Maira and Matla stood guard outside, someone approached: a dwarf from town, by the name of Mavel. He's suspicious, until he sees Father Willie. Mavel is saddened by the deaths, and over beers and dinner (fish and cranberries), Mavel shares his story. He is looking for his brother, Gorm, who, many years ago, was an adventurer with Ilbhaan and Worjos. On their last adventure, they found... something... out, something that was enough to make Ilbhaan swear off magic entirely. But that was many years ago; now Gorm, who is a miner by trade, has been approached by the same sailors that were acting suspiciously earlier. Mavel didn't think that Gorm was in any kind of trouble, but he also didn't think his brother wanted anything to do with the sailors.

After dinner, Fith the snake felt some creatures approaching, and Maira felt it through her empathic link. The creatures were approaching along the beach, below the cliff on which the lighthouse stood. The group went outside and tried to spot them; Willie stood and loudly demanded that they reveal themselves, and Matla tossed his torch down onto the beach to get a better look, but all they could see was shadows.

Willie was pelted with stones from down below! The creatures, who hid in the shadows at the base of the cliff, were attacking! Xanril, Willie and Maira shot arrows and crossbow bolts, and Matla climbed down the cliff to take the creatures on face to face. Xanril took down one creature, which Willie identified as a kobold, before taking a deadly blow to the eye with a well-placed sling stone; he was unconscious and bleeding to death...

Willie was able to heal him with the loving power of Rhoban, but when Xanril returned to the top of the bluff to take aim, he was hit again!

Maira got off another shot but missed. Instead of continuing, she picked up on the way the kobolds avoided the torch on the beach and cast a light spell on a rock near the center of the group. The yapping little creatures scattered, half of them going north and the others going south - straight for Matla, who had had some blood drawn by a slung stone but was still ready for a fight!

Matla's greataxe made quick work of the small creatures, and soon only one was left. The cowardly kobold, wounded by Willie's crossbow, threw down its spear and prostrated itself before the mighty barbarian. Matla showed it mercy and told it to go - and with a leap, the creature was off and running to catch up to its comrades.

Xanril once again felt the power of Rhoban, and the group convened to watch the lighthouse for the rest of the night, which passed uneventfully.

If His ways are mysterious, then how can you know He's good?

2009-09-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

In response to Lindsey's comment on my earlier post, the parallel between what the woman believed happened and torture seems pretty clear in my head. From her words, it seems to me that she was thanking God for having the power to deflect the arrow just enough to prevent it from causing the death of the little girl. The power to do this, though, comes in some invisible, insubstantial form. The God Who did this is also the same God who created the world and everything in it, including the person who shot the arrow.

The woman was offering her thanks to God for sparing the life of this little girl - the same God Who (the woman believes) created the little girl in the first place.

My first question, looking at these assumptions (a God Who wields both the immense power to bring into creation an entire universe, and the subtle power to nearly deflect an arrow in its path), is: why wouldn't this God use his immense power in this case, rather than his subtle power?

And just asking that question, I can already hear the apologists begin their rationalizations. But I'll leave that argument for others to make, and I'll simply ask this: if a human being had both of those levels of power, and chose the subtle one - wouldn't we consider that person a monster? Wouldn't we view a person who could have completely prevented the accident in the first place, but instead chose to physically injure a little girl, cause her the emotional trauma of, y'know, being hit in the neck with a freakin' arrow, and cause the financial and emotional burden to her and her family... wouldn't we view that as a form of torture?

But somehow, when it's God, people just assume that "He works in mysterious ways". We give God, Who is supposed to be the source of our morality, a pass when it comes to actually applying our ideas of morality to Him.

And this leads in to why I am so strongly motivated to exposing the delusion (for I see it as such) of belief in such a God: because that same mindset affects me in a very real, direct way, and my hope is that by explaining it, I can show you how it affects you and everyone around you, as well.

The mindset that sees this way is one I have trouble understanding, and I see it in the way a certain sizable number of my fellow citizens do not wish to see our leaders held to the same standard of lawfulness that everyday Americans are held to - of which the most horrific example I can think of are our flagrant violations of the civilized laws against torture and indefinite imprisonment of people without formal charges. I don't understand how presidents, regardless of their political party, are allowed to blatantly violate laws that specifically apply to them in regards to collecting intelligence on American citizens on American soil, or to ignore laws and treaties (not to mention simple human decency and the moral high ground) that ban torture and require known acts of torture to be prosecuted, to choose just two examples out of the many that come to mind.

The conservative movement has been building their power over the last 40 years. They've steadily built a constituency out of the same folk who believe in the same kind of God Who has the ability to have created us in a perfect state, but chose instead to doom some of us to eternal torture. And the conservative movement, who have collected primarily in the Republican Party (much like a pus collects in an untreated wound) but who also infect the Democratic Party to a degree (or at least their leadership), have wooed and inflamed those beliefs and transfered that moral blindness and obeisance to authority to themselves.

I view the rise of authoritarianism, and the rise of the Christianist Right, as linked (because they are, in myriad documented ways) and as a danger that must be fought. The election committee of our 43rd president for his second term campaigned in (among other places) the mammoth corporate churches, the ones with million-dollar facilities and CEOs and flashy media networks, in spite of the laws against separation of church and state. The Republican presidential campaign used enlisted men, in uniform, to speak in those churches to collect votes, another violation of tradition and prohibitions against the politicization of our armed forces. They were able to get away with this because authoritarian, evangelical Christians already accept the idea that "these laws are for you, but not for God". Our 43rd president described his war of choice against Iraq as a "crusade", a word with obvious and heavy-handed religious connotations.

That's why I get so worked up about this. It's not an abstract, philosophical point to me. Fundamentalism has brought about policies of torture, oppression, and death, for Americans and foreigners. So the least I can do is try to draw people's attention to it. Sadly, yes, I realize, writing on my little blog isn't a great effort, but it's a small start.

And finally, you're right, I'm never going to disprove God's existence. That's actually not possible, for several reasons, not least of which is that one can't prove a negative. Likewise, God as He is worshiped in the real world, by real people, has been defined in such a way that it is nearly impossible to prove or disprove His existence. Of course, to me, that's because the real world gives no evidence, positive or negative, of God's existence or intervention; if all someone has to show me that says God exists is that a little girl didn't die of an arrow wound in the neck, can I show them a story about a little girl who died when she crawled into a washing machine?

In both cases, a theist will see the hand of God. To me, if God did both of those things, He's a sadist. The more likely explanation, though, is that both of those events, and the millions and billions of others that happen in the world, are the result of people's misluck, carelessness, stupidity, and greed.

In other words, random events. In that, I think Lindsey and I agree, I think.

How about you?

Seamless upgrade is a plus

2009-09-04T10:06:00.001-07:00

Jason Kottke waxes philosophical on the Apple user's upgrade experience:

The upgrade process in each case was painless. To set up the MBP, I just connected it to my Time Machine drive and was up and running about an hour later with all my apps and preferences intact. The iPhone took even less time than that and everything from my old phone was magically there. Snow Leopard took 45 minutes and, aside from a couple of Mail.app and Safari plug-ins I use, everything was just as before.1 Past upgrades of Apple computers and iPods have gone similarly well.

Which is where the potential difficulty for Apple comes in. From a superficial perspective, my old MBP and new MBP felt exactly the same...same OS, same desktop wallpaper, same Dock, all my same files in their same folders, etc. Same deal with the iPhone except moreso...the iPhone is almost entirely software and that was nearly identical. And re: Snow Leopard, I haven't noticed any changes at all aside from the aforementioned absent plug-ins.

So, just having paid thousands of dollars for new hardware and software, I have what feels like my same old stuff.

I've experienced the same, seamless transition: going from my old iBook G3 to my new sexy MacBook Pro, and going from my first-generation iPhone to my iPhone 3GS, and upgrading the OS from Jaguar to Panther to Leopard - once I ran the update process, my wallpaper, applications, settings, and files were all right where I had left them. But I've always considered that a feature, a plus, not a negative, because in each case, I could see my stuff running faster and with fewer glitches or errors.

Taking away the jarring transition from one piece of kit to another, and dropping all the files and customizations I had been collecting and making for years prior, forced me to pay attention to the one thing (or several things) that had really changed: the underlying hardware was faster, or the operating system itself was more efficient and powerful.